


Weather in July

by MissCora



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCora/pseuds/MissCora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Other #1 - The first time they make Jim retire (this goes like this "you either retire or you get court-martialed!"), Bones misses him so much he retires his own commission and plans to just visit for a few days, which turns into moving in, which turns into, you KNOW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weather in July

**Author's Note:**

> Again, many thanks to the excellent [](http://incandescently.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://incandescently.livejournal.com/)**incandescently**. This one went a little sideways from the original prompt - the images popped into my head and would not be budged, so there you are. And yes, this is pretty much exactly what summer in Eastern Iowa is like.
> 
> Title inspired by Iowa Stubborn from _The Music Man_ by Meredith Wilson.
> 
> Written originally for the 2009 Space Married challenge and reposed here for archival purposes in preparation for the new movie.

The heat was oppressive, sweltering, the humidity making the very idea of going outside unfathomable. July in Iowa - was there anything worse? From inside the mostly cool confines of the old farmhouse Jim sat, staring out the window at gently rolling hills but barely seeing them. It didn’t match the view in his mind. There was definitely supposed to be an endless vista out his window, but a horizon had no part in it.

Jim was supposed to be able to go anywhere; the vastness of space should be laid out before him, not a sky hemmed in by the harsh realities of land. The clouds that were rolling in were water vapor where they should have been ionized stardust.

And it sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be this damn hot.

He idly wondered if the clouds would mean a storm to break the heat, but he couldn’t work up the energy to really care. The old farmhouse’s environmental controls were worn and outdated but it was enough to keep out air so liquid it was practically solid, and beyond that Jim didn’t much care.

He certainly didn’t care about the dust cloud moving down the road. One of his neighbors, he presumed. Neighbors. Hah. Concerned local women who didn’t like to think of “that poor Kirk boy” all alone, who brought casseroles and pies that he didn’t eat and fussed at him. Those weren’t neighbors. Neighbors you couldn’t get away from. Neighbors were crammed into shipboard berths, with shared walls and doors that let out onto the same hallways leading to a communal mess. Now his nearest neighbor was a good ten minutes away on the bike that had been stored in the garage when he got here and hadn’t moved since.

The battered old truck which had kicked up all the dust moved out of range of the window and Jim heard the engine shut off and the slam of a door, the noise coming with that faint squeal which hinted at rust. It wouldn’t be enough to deal with yet but it would probably be a problem after a few more winters. Not that Jim cared that much, but the academic question of the vehicle held his interest more than the sound of heavy footsteps on the porch and the loud, insistent knocking.

Jim simply sat, unmoving, perfectly content to wait out whomever it was; eventually they would give up, he was certain. They always did. But his certainty shivered and cracked as the seconds ticked past and he didn’t hear those footsteps retreat.

The second knock was almost startling as it rapped out into the quiet, and a third set of taps came soon after, and yet more after that, until finally it wasn’t so much a decision to find out who was out there as the knowledge that they probably weren’t leaving until he proved he was still alive that got Jim out of the chair. The knocks continuing as he crossed to the door which opened to reveal a blast of stifling heat and the last person on earth he’d expected. The last person he’d expected on earth.

“What the hell are _you_ doing here, Bones?”

“Nice to see you, too, asshole. You gonna let me in or just gonna wait till I melt in this damn humidity?”

\---

The clouds _had_ presaged rain, it turned out, but not the kind which would do anything about the omnipresent heat. If anything, the ceaseless sifting of water from the sky felt more like humidity made solid than a real storm, and warm rain was hateful, mocking Jim with the knowledge that at any other time of the year it would be a cool balm against the heat. Instead it was an inescapable reality of atmospheric pressure and too bright sun; unwilling to simply taunt him any longer from the stratosphere it coalesced, falling down about him. The occasional heavier drops made an audible thud as they impacted the dirt, but mostly all it did was make things damper and more uncomfortable.

And yet for the first time in weeks it was better to be outside than in. At least outside there was a reason for his tangible discomfort and unease. The pressure inside the house was sourceless, an amorphous ache crawling under his skin at the sound of footsteps not his own. His sanctuary prison had been invaded and Jim couldn’t even find it in himself to object. After all, Bones’ presence in his life had been a constant ever since he’d left Iowa. It’s just that now he was back in Iowa and Bones didn’t belong in this corner of his life, didn’t belong amidst the wet heat and the rolling hills, hadn’t been invited with his probing looks and his loudly unspoken questions echoing through the house in time with steady footsteps.

It was ridiculous, hiding out here from his best friend, damp and hot and fucking uncomfortable and Bones wasn’t something to be afraid of. Hell, even if he did have questions it wasn’t like he’d ask them. They’d founded their friendship, way back when, on the ongoing failure to pry into each other’s deeply fucked up lives and that formula had worked well for them with everything that had come since. There was no reason to be sitting on the old pasture fence getting steadily wetter. An uninvolved observer would probably think he was _hiding_ out here, and James Tiberius Kirk did not fucking _hide_.

But, then again, James Tiberius Kirk did also not get fucking grounded by the Starfleet higher ups (and it hadn’t escaped his notice that it was the same damn word you’d use to punish a fucking child). James Tiberius Kirk did not get pulled off his ship and oh so politely _advised_ to make himself scarce, head to the backwoods, to fucking _Riverside_ until things blew over.

Screw anyone who thought he was hiding. Or sulking. Or doing anything but enjoying the nice, light summer rain.

Fucking hideous hot Iowa rain.

\---

Night had fallen and it was _still_ hotter than it had any right to be and Jim was _still_ sitting, staring into the distance. There was lightning flashing to the west, the sharp brilliance providing brief, stark illumination but Jim knew it still didn’t mean things were going to get better. Two decades of experience with Iowa summers burned knowledge into a man’s bones, it turned out, and it didn’t matter how long he’d been away; he could tell. Heat lightning flashing from cloud to cloud at the base of the stratosphere, and there would be rain over there but it was so far away even the sound never reached him. There was nothing to get in the way of the light, though - no groves of trees or skylines of buildings. Not out here. Not in Iowa.

The sound of the porch door opening with the creak of springs before slamming closed again was the fake thunderous accompaniment to the next flash, but Jim didn’t turn to look as Bones’ boots thudded through the grass towards him and the other man leaned against the fence Jim had perched on.

“Jesus, Jim, are you going to eat _anything_ tonight? You know you’ve got almost half a dozen casseroles going off in your fridge, right?”

“What the hell are you doing here, Bones?” Jim asked. He knew that as distractions went it was weak but he didn’t really want to talk. Not about casseroles gifted to him by concerned neighbors who really wanted to pry, not about how and why he wasn’t particularly interested in food, not about anything. But it wasn’t like Bones would ever really be distracted from fussing over his eating habits or anything else he took into his head to fuss about.

“ _Food_ , Jim. You know, that stuff you ingest so you don’t pass out and I don’t have to IV your ass.”

The only real options for deflection were rude banter or asking again, and neither of them seemed to be in the mood for innuendo. Besides, he really wanted to know. Needed to know. “What are you _doing_ here, Bones?” he repeated and this time it seemed to get through, because Bones was silent for a few moments and Jim was sure that if he turned around the flashes in the distance would show an endless depth of concern in the other man’s eyes, barely covered by the veneer of sarcasm and cynicism he habitually wore.

Jim didn’t turn, didn’t look, but somehow it wasn’t at all surprising when a hand settled on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “I told Pike and those bastards that if they were giving you a long vacation I was damned well taking one.” Jim snorted at that, tensing under Bones’ hand at the idea that this was a _vacation_ , but Bones just went on. “Told them I wasn’t flying under any other captain, and I’d be back when you were and not a fucking minute sooner, and they could shove my commission where the sun don’t shine if they didn’t like it.”

And then Jim did turn, the look in his eyes aghast and maybe the flashes of light were enough to show his expression or maybe Bones just knew him that well because even as the hand fell away from his shoulder the older man was shrugging slightly. “Might not have said it _quite_ like that. Now, you walking back to the house for dinner or am I dragging you?”

\---

The crack of thunder, when it finally came, was like the herald of the impending wrath of the gods disguised as a summer storm, as if that puny term could ever encompass the pure fury of the elements that poured forth from the sky. Summer storms in Iowa, when the rain reminded men that once upon a time the whole planet had been covered in water, and someday it would be again. Rain poured down so fast and so hard even the parched dry earth could not suck it in fast enough and the runoff flooded the quiet creeks into raging torrents. Lightning and thunder came in quick succession, rolling one into the other until the world was alive with noise and brilliant light and no man could stand against it.

Arms outstretched, head titled up, every inch of him soaked straight through, Jim stood in the middle of the old farmhouse’s little yard, certain for the first time since he’d come back to Iowa that he was still alive.

Space was disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence, and this was Mother Earth proving that she was just as bad, and Jim loved it. Loved the heavy wetness pounding into him. Loved the rolling crashes which shook the whole world. Loved the stark brilliance backlighting even the wretched old farmhouse into something beautiful. He even loved the stupid, ratty little umbrella that suddenly appeared above his head, keeping the rain out of his eyes - a tiny gesture in the face of nature’s unrelenting release but sincere and determined despite being completely overwhelmed.

Which, Jim thought, was a pretty apt metaphor for the man holding the umbrella, who he loved more than the rest of it combined. Standing up against death and destruction, facing down everyone from Admirals to Mother Nature herself, going to any lengths to provide a little relief in an endless universe of pain and suffering, and doing it all with a determination which screamed out ‘I may be battered but I’m not going down without a fight!’

Jim turned to face Bones, unsurprised by the other man’s. “What are you doing here, Bones?”

Bones just raised an eyebrow, as though to say ‘you, James Tiberius Kirk, are an idiot,’ and said nothing.

“What are you doing _here_?” The question was quiet, but no less insistent for all of that; Jim would keep asking until he got the answer he wanted, even if he wasn’t entirely clear what that was.

And Bones seemed to understand that, the way he understood all the words Jim could never find, because he sighed quietly, then pulled the other man closer before saying, “You’re here, Jim. Where the hell else was I gonna be?”


End file.
